Silence, disguised I watch you

 Maybe I should come up with a name for these pointless trivia posts that are focused on debunking common misconceptions or myths. Ah well. This time it's JoJo's Bizarre Adventure.

Despite all the music references in the series, the "JoJo" nickname for the main characters did not come from the song "Get Back" by the Beatles. Araki used to have meetings and work on his manga at a restaurant called Jonathan's, and he named his main character Jonathan Joestar in honour of the restaurant. The JoJo name came from that.

In relation to the above, it's commonly stated that Stands are named after classic rock bands or songs. It's more accurate to say they're named after bands or songs in general - there isn't really any apparent preference for one genre or time period over any other, and there are some Stands named after more (comparatively) modern or non-rock acts, such as Limp Bizkit and Born This Way. Also, it's important to keep in mind that the series only started getting anime adaptations a few decades after the original manga came out, so what seems like a dated reference now was current at the time of the manga.

It's often said that Kishibe Rohan is based on the author, Hirohiko Araki, or even that he's a stand-in for Araki himself. However, Araki has denied this, citing differences between him and Rohan (for instance, Rohan hates Josuke, but Araki considers him his favourite character). However, Rohan's philosophy regarding creating manga is based on Araki's own.

It's common belief that Avdol was supposed to permanently die after being shot in Part 3, but was brought back due to how popular he was. In fact, his death was always meant to be temporary, and he was never that popular, consistently ranking fairly low in popularity polls. 

Contrary to popular belief, The World was not originally intended to have the powers of all the other tarot-based Stands combined. People tend to think this because DIO uses a very Hermit Purple-esque ability early in Part 3, which never gets brought up again. Araki has confirmed that the Hermit Purple-like Stand, colloquially named Hermit Purple II, was actually the Stand of Jonathan Joestar, whose body DIO had taken over.

It's a very common belief that in Part 4, Josuke went back in time to save his future self, but this is not true. For one, Araki confirmed that the mysterious saviour in the past may or may not have actually looked like Josuke, as his appearance is based on Koichi's retelling and own imagination of the events, rather than actual fact. Secondly, people often claim that the reason the mysterious saviour is injured in the past is that Josuke came back in time after his fight with Kira, but the stranger's injuries don't match up with the injuries Josuke suffered, not to mention Josuke was beaten so badly he could barely stand after that fight, while the stranger still had enough strength to not only stand, but to push a car.

DIO's line when he stops time using The World is commonly quoted as "Toki wo tomare!", supposedly meaning "Time is stopped!". This, however, is grammatically incorrect, and could be most closely translated as something like "To be able to stop time..." The actual line is "Toki yo, tomare!", which means "Time, stop!" - as in, addressing time as if it's a person, and commanding it to stop. The reason for the mistake is that many people are more familiar with the more common particle "wo" rather than the comparatively less common and more archaic "yo", and because "yo" tends to become "o" when spoken after a vowel, just like "wo" so "toki yo" sounds more like "toki o" which could be misinterpreted as "toki wo". Also, "The World" is just the name of the Stand, the actual ability is called Time Stop (though this is muddled somewhat by Jotaro naming his own time stop ability "Star Platinum: The World"). It's never implied to be spelled as "Za Warudo" either, that's just how it's pronounced when converted into katakana. 

It's often claimed that Part 7 is set in the alternate universe created by Made in Heaven at the end of Part 6, but this is false. Made in Heaven explicitly backfires at the end of Part 6, resetting the timeline instead to a world where Pucci never existed, the other characters are much happier and Jotaro is a better father to Jolyne. Araki confirmed that Parts 7 and 8 take place in an already-existing alternate universe within the JoJo multiverse.

Despite how he comes across, Alessi is not a paedophile. He's just a serial killer who's a coward, so he turns his victims into children so they can't fight back. It can often come across that way because of his creepy demeanour and the fact he spends most of his fight chasing around a naked de-aged Polnareff, but the nudity there was a coincidence (Polnareff shrunk out of his clothes, and then later was attacked while bathing), not to mention that nudity of children in non-sexual situations is not considered taboo in Japan.

A lot of people believe that Joseph Joestar is Jonathan Joestar's son. In fact, he's Jonathan's grandson, with Jonathan's son, George Joestar, being his father. This is easy to confuse because George is an incredibly minor character - he only appears in one flashback and gets killed off, so most fans tend to forget he exists.

Due to the popular Flash animation mudah.swf, a lot of people think that DIO exclaims "Wryyyy!" after using his Roadroller-Da! special move in the game JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Heritage for the Future. In fact, in the actual game, he just laughs. The "Wryyyy!" soundbite from the Flash animation was taken from Shadow Dio's Charisma! super move.

And speaking of which, in the initial manga translations the most common spellings for a vampire's cry were either "Ureeeeyy!" or simply "Reeee!" The "Wryyyy!" spelling was used, but rarely. It became the most commonly-used among fans after the aforementioned mudah.swf animation popularised it, and once JJBA started really taking off in the West with the anime adaptations being released, official media adopted it as the most common spelling. The game Heritage for the Future spells it as URYYYYYY! in the name of one of Shadow Dio's supers.